


Who Exorcizes the Exorcist?

by Hoodoo



Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Beetlejuice beetlejuice beetlejuice, Boredom, Cigarettes, Depression, Desperation, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Exploration, F/M, Fictional books are real here!, Freedom, Freudian Slip, Fucking, Helplessness, Holy Water, Isolation, Journals, Liar, Limbo, Loneliness, Lovecraftian, Masturbation, Masturbation in Bathroom, Musical References, Naked Female Clothed Male, Naughty Thoughts, Nightmare Fuel, No Escape, No options but one, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Nudity, Penis In Vagina Sex, Rage, Shapeshifting, Shoggoth, Spying, Stolen Kiss, Summoning Circles, Trapped, Voyeurism, Weed, Worldbuilding, forbidden knowledge, heat - Freeform, new roommate, routines, settling in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:28:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21718465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoodoo/pseuds/Hoodoo
Summary: As punishment for everything he's done, Beetlejuice is trapped in limbo in the old Maitland house. A woman has been hired to exorcise him.
Relationships: Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 144
Kudos: 123





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No specific version of Beetlejuice can be taken for granted here; both movie and musical canon are referenced.

“--and here you can see that the living room flows nicely into the dining room--”

Groggily, Beetlejuice opened his eyes.

“--the kitchen is older but functional! There’s a basement--”

Broken sentences and their words drifted though the house to him. He half wanted to listen and half didn’t care. He felt logy, his head full of cotton.

“--the bedrooms are adequate for a house this age. The main bath is upstairs, and you said you were an artist? Wait till I show you the light that comes into this room! It’s a bedroom, but could be used as a studio--”

The voice got louder, and the distinct sound of high heels tapping on the wooden floor accompanied it. There was someone else too, but their voice was quieter and less perky than whoever was exulting the virtues of this house. 

This house. This _fucking house._ It’d been his prison for so long now. He’d thought the purgatory of the goddamned waiting room of the Netherworld was bad; at least there he’d had other beings to talk to! Here there were just dust motes and endless days. The Maitlands, after Barbara’s little trick with the Sandworm-- _just how in the fuck did she manage to bring that beast into the living world, anyway?!--_ were granted more freedom, because it was obvious she had some special abilities no one deep in the red-tape bureaucracy had imagined. 

And since Mrs. Maitland managed to get him eaten by a fucking Sandworm on the living plane in this house, “killing” him a second time, he was stuck without recourse. When it was all said and done, he wasn’t re-assigned to assist anyone. That may have been preferable. Shit, there were moments in his deepest despair that he thought the Lost Souls room would be better than this. After years of waiting for his case to be processed, he was dumped back in here in this _fucking house_ as punishment!

While he was stagnant and otiose, he had a recurring vision that he hadn’t been eaten by a Sandworm, but instead had been alive and impaled. He always clutched at his chest during those dreams, pressing a hand against the phantom pain. That couldn’t be the truth, could it? His head was so muzzy sometimes he didn’t know what his own history was. He supposed it didn’t really matter, in the end.

Either way--or both ways--he ended up being imprisoned here, he’d been hobbled and lost of much of his power. Beetlejuice ground his teeth till his jaw hurt just thinking about it. Even though it’d been so long ago, the wound still hurt. The standard conditions applied, but who knew enough to say his name? The Deetzes were gone, their little goth daughter was gone. Time passed differently in the Netherworld versus the living one; during the time he was in limbo there they could be dead here for all he knew. He was stranded for eternity.

Whoever owned this house now kept a ‘for rent’ sign out front permanently, it seemed. Over the years the house was never occupied long, though. It was in a small town with no hot rental market. The locals stayed away. Plus Beetlejuice put the skills he still retained to good use--because what the fuck else was he going to do?!--and no one who dared lease the place ever stayed very long. 

His anger towards his whole situation gave him short bursts of stamina, and he’d found that was enough to scare people out of the place. The longer they managed to stay, the stronger he got, siphoning off living energy. It was a double-edged sword, that way. The vitality that rolled off people was seductive.

But he didn’t want to be around people. He’d given up on any living person saying his name and freeing him; it was hopeless and made him feel an ugly mash of wrath and deep sadness. So if he was going to be miserable, he may as well make breathers miserable too so they’d leave him alone. Then he could wallow even deeper in his misery.

It’d been so long since a person had come through the energy that he ate like a parasite seeped away, like water in cupped hands. Now he was drowsy and slow and felt like he’d been trapped in resin.

Luckily whoever was moving through the house came to him, instead of him having to track them down to get a look at them. He was invisible, of course; he had no reserves to become corporeal. 

A woman in a bright pink pants’ suit and too much foundation opened the door of the room he languished in. 

“Look at the windows! You can even see some of the town from here. It’s a nice little place, a good sense of community--”

Her high pitched, hard-sell voice grated on Beetlejuice’s ears and he grimaced; he hadn’t moved in so long he felt his face stretch awkwardly. Another woman, less flashily dressed in a peasant skirt and tank top and much less makeup, entered the room. Dutifully she went to the dirty, streaked windows and looked out.

“--nothing a little bit of elbow grease won’t clean up!” the pink woman, obviously a realtor, blathered on. “Those are original, double hung windows, and they’ve been kept up, so they provide just as good insulation as the new vinyl ones do--”

The other woman, the potential lessee, put an open hand to the dirty glass. She didn’t actually touch it, he saw, probably due to the grime. She spun in a slow circle, taking in the entire room. The quilt on the bed was faded and a thin layer of dust coated everything. Although it was obvious she noted all of that, her gaze slipped past Beetlejuice hovering in the upper corner above the door with no hesitation.

Being unseen hurt like a gut punch.

The woman in the skirt nodded slowly. “I think this will do just fine,” she said quietly. 

The realtor beamed. “Oh, that’s excellent! Let’s go back to the office and get started on the paperwork. I’ll also get a maid service to come and air the place out and give it a cleaning, it’s been a bit since anyone has lived here--”

The two woman left the room and the realtor’s voice became quieter the further they moved through the house, away from him. 

It’d been some time since anyone lived here, true, agreed Beetlejuice silently.

He’d have to dust himself off and get rid of this new tenant so there’d be no one living here again. 

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

The cleaning service did their jobs thoroughly and efficiently. It was odd to have so many people tromping through the place after it’d been vacant for so long. Beetlejuice didn’t have the strength to do anything but watch, and none of the people who’d been hired stayed even a minute past quitting time. The old Maitland house had a bad reputation.

Finally it was quiet and still, although with a fresher air. The woman who rented the house didn’t come that night, but bright and early the next morning she arrived. 

Beetlejuice drifted languidly after her as she inspected the place on her own. He watched with disinterest as she opened cupboards. He was bored as she changed the sheets on the bed and put a basket of toiletries in the bathroom. She carried several boxes in from her car, but before she began opening them, he felt drained and made his way back upstairs to the bedroom he preferred to rest in. The bedroom she decided to use as hers, as it turned out. 

That was good; he’d be able to stay close to her and slowly infect her dreams. The more scared she got, the better it would be for him. 

In his sluggish state he never heard her leave. When Beetlejuice snapped back more aware in the late afternoon, she was nowhere to be found in the house. 

She’d done a quick job of putting her things around and making the house seem already a bit lived in. The top dresser drawer had been left open; he saw satin panties and bras that he would have run his hand through if he could, but in his present state of being he couldn’t physically touch them. A few hardback books had been placed on the table beside the bed: “Outlander” and “Twilight”, and a leather bound book that looked to be a journal or diary. He grimaced. In the bathroom he found bottles of what must be shampoo and body wash with no labels on them. He spied chalk in the smaller, more light-filled bedroom; didn’t the realtor say she was an artist? His brain was too fuzzy to remember.

A small forest of plants had been grouped near the windows. There were also candles of various shapes, sizes, and colors everywhere. Another unopened box, with the cardboard lid torn enough that he could see inside it, had been left near the couch. It was full of other trite books.

He had a sneaking suspicion she was a touchy-feely, “save the whales”, superficial kind of woman. So far everything he’d discovered about the new tenant equalled dull and mundane. Scaring her off wasn’t going to be a challenge or any fun. 

Downstairs she’d unpacked some non-perishables in the kitchen. Tiny vials full of liquid and stainless steel cannisters full of he didn’t know what sat in neat rows under the cabinets, plus a gallon water jug filled to the brim was near the sink. He imagined it was water for the plants. Another book was on the kitchen counter, a cookbook with its cover opened to the first, non-printed page. An embossed seal pressed in the lower right corner caught his eye. He ran his fingers over the raised seal, even if he couldn’t feel it. 

From the Library 

Of

Lisette Black

Beetlejuice grinned. Names had power. 

He knew that better than anyone. 

* * *

When the woman-- _Lisette,_ Beetlejuice reminded himself; it was good to whisper names from empty rooms to set up a general atmosphere of general and to prime a target for further scares--returned, she unloaded two bags of fresh groceries. 

The two steaks she put in the refrigerator proved she wasn’t vegan, at least. 

Throughout the rest of the evening, Beetlejuice hung out and simply watched her. She had a mobile phone but didn’t stare at it obsessively as he’d learned most people nowadays did. She still wore the skirt, but hiked it up over her thighs as she stretched over the arm of the couch to dig through the cardboard box of books until she found one she seemed satisfied with. The title had been worn off the cover and Beetlejuice didn’t drift close enough to peek inside. 

He was more interested in the fact she didn’t readjust her skirt, leaving it bunched on her upper legs. 

Lisette sat with her legs curled under her and read into the night. She ate dinner on the couch. She didn’t talk to herself. She was fully absorbed in her book.

Beetlejuice was bored to tears. There wasn’t any harm in starting things off a little ahead of schedule, he rationalized to himself, and he let the tips of his fingers just barely brush against the hair on the back of her head. 

Her hand came up and swatted at nothing as she turned her head, looking for a gnat or fly. Once again her gaze skipped over him, but Beetlejuice enjoyed seeing the annoyed expression on her face. Her mouth also formed words in a whisper low enough that he couldn’t quite understand them; she was praying. He was tempted to repeat the touch, but decided not to; it was best to let her think everything was normal. 

Her sense of security would help heighten the real frights, when they happened. 

_tbc_


	3. Chapter 3

Christ she was boring.

Beetlejuice had no choice but to learn people’s routines, and Lisette’s was just too simple. Reading, cooking, napping . . . everything about her was quiet and repetitive. She prayed half under her breath a lot. She scribbled in her journal too, sometimes for long periods, sometimes just a random note out of the blue. She hadn’t touched the chalk he’d seen in the smaller bedroom, despite what he’d overheard about her being an artist. 

Lisette had explored every room in the house. It was too large for her, and after the initial walk through some of the rooms she closed the doors and didn’t enter them again. Beetlejuice wondered briefly why she’d rented such a big place, but breathers’ motivations didn’t interest him enough to spend much time puzzling it out. 

One area she didn’t look over once and then turn her back on it was the attic. Although Adam Maitland’s model of the town was long gone, the amount of time Beetlejuice had spent in it pinned some of his previous energy in the space, and it was less taxing for him to watch the woman as she poked around up there. The old, faint outline of the chalk door Adam had sketched on the rough brick of the chimney caught her eye, and Beetlejuice watched Lisette follow the dusty lines with her fingers. 

He didn’t miss seeing that she didn’t actually touch the chalk. She obviously had some phobia of dirt and getting her hands dusty. 

Lisette stood in front of the chimney for a while, chewing her lip, and muttering one of her prayers before turning on her heel and almost walking directly through him as she went back to the stairs. Beetlejuice sidestepped out of her way, but not quite quickly enough. Her shoulder passed through his.

The actual touch of her sent a bolt of electrified pleasure through him. Contact with the living felt delicious. It could be an addictive high, but like all intoxications it didn’t last forever and coming down from it was sickening. 

He knew the effect on a living person was slightly different when they walked through a ghost. It would unexpectedly chill them, and especially sensitive people might ache from it, like a bruise they didn’t remember getting. Lisette gasped and grabbed her shoulder, rubbing it like she’d been stung. 

As he hadn’t put much effort into anything yet it hadn’t occurred to Beetlejuice that she might be attuned to anything ghostly.

That night she tossed and turned in her bed while she slept. A few times she said something in her sleep, but the words were muffled and soft and even when he put his ear right up to her mouth they were too sibilant to understand.

Beetlejuice wondered what dreams might be in her head, and whether or not he could capitalize on them. He dragged a dirty fingernail down the side of her face, and a tiny shiver of pleasure tickled his hand. 

She murmured again, with a distinct, “Shhh,” sound.

Maybe she would be more interesting than he thought. 

_tbc_


	4. Chapter 4

More interesting, indeed.

Every night now she talked in her sleep. Whether it was triggered by her walking through him or something else entirely, he didn’t know. He considered standing in her way and having her do it again, but after the initial hot bliss it wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience for him either. His existance was hellish enough without the unsettling, lingering nausea created by being so damn close but so fucking far away from what he wanted: life. 

Still, Beetlejuice hung near her bed anyway, while she slept. He couldn’t and didn’t keep track of her all day long. She left the house occasionally, of course, and sometimes he slipped back into a daze while she was gone. It could take a bit of time to shake off the drowsiness when she returned, so he had no idea what she did while he wasn’t aware. One constant, though, was her bed.

He either stood beside it, or floated above her, or if he was feeling particularly daring, he sat down on the mattress near her. Any of those would be terrifying for someone to wake up to, and he grinned thinking of her reaction to waking up and seeing him unexpectedly in the dark. 

That never came to pass, due to his current state of being, and that made the ember of anger deep in his gut that never completely died flare a little.

He wanted to grab her. He wanted to scream in her face. He wanted to pull the stupid but effective trick of transforming the house’s bannister into a demonic snake and terrorize her. Fear was a dry substitute for physical touch, but it was what he was used to, and he’d take it. 

Beetlejuice scowled. This half-life, this tied down punishment, was the fucking worst. He ran a hand over his head, yanking his hair as his fingers pushed through it and encountered knots. The pain that erupted in his skull kicked fuel on the anger of his hopeless situation. He could see no end to it, just this impotent, endless existence--

In his rage, in his desperation to touch that spark of life again, he broke his resolve and grabbed Lisette’s sleeping form. 

It was just her bare shoulder. The immediate shock of pure warmth from contact with living skin shook him, sending a wave of euphoria crashing through his nerve endings. 

She shifted uneasily in her sleep. He didn’t care, allowing his hand to sink into her with more force, trying to funnel as much of that delicious feeling into his cold body as possible. Lisette groaned a little, and he still didn’t care. He felt a rictus grin stretch his face; if she woke up to this spectral vision she’d run screaming out of the house, and it would be completely worth it--

She didn’t wake up, however. She twitched, and rolled her shoulder as if that would dislodge him.

Beetlejuice licked his teeth and wondered if he was bold enough to kiss her mouth and steal her breath too. He leaned down, over her, and thought slipping his cold tongue between her lips might be enough to ease into her dreams, where he could plant the seeds that would have her say his name and finally free him--

She muttered something. He didn’t catch it. She sighed, and as his mouth hovered over hers, sucking in the moist breath she just released, just before his lips touched her, she said it again, more clearly. 

_“Shoggoth.”_

Her voice wasn’t strong. It wasn’t loud. It was a sleepy whisper; it faded out at the end, her tongue caught between her teeth, drawing the word out longer than it actually was.

The effect on him, however, was immediate. 

Beetlejuice threw himself backwards, away from her prone form. The word surged energy into his chest, and he might have thought he was having a heart attack if he wasn’t already dead. His hand and arm tingled from the contact with her; there was still a deep pleasure that had settled into his gut. It soured just a bit with the confusion that swirled through him.

_She said his name!_ Part of his name! A name that was more secret than not, one he didn’t respond to, one he didn’t particularly want others to know. It held less power than his other name, his public name, the name he’d _chosen_ to hold the key to his release, but it was still _his name!_

All trace of the rage in him vanished. He was euphoric from touching her, residual bliss singing through his nerves, and this extra little treat? This turn of luck was almost unbelievable. Beetlejuice wanted to dive right back into the bed with her, under the blankets; he wanted to curl around her sleeping body and soak up all the heat and energy and life he could, wanted to see if he could stroke her face, kiss her, coax his name from her throat again--

\--he stopped. 

Shoggoth was good, but it didn’t do anything for him. She could say it all day, every day, scream it from the rooftops on repeat until her voice gave out, and nothing would truly come of it. She needed to say his chosen name three times to bring him back. 

It was a bitter pill to swallow, but now he had the faintest glimmer of hope. He had no clue how the odd collection of syllables that made up “shoggoth” came out of her mouth, but with a nudge maybe he could get “Beetlejuice” to take its place. He might be able to find one of his old, crumpled “Betelguese” business cards, and dredge up enough energy to make it corporeal for her to find, and then, and then, and then . . . !

With elation from touching her fading fast but still sweet inside him, Beetlejuice left the room to go searching. He located not one but two of the faded cards extolling his services, and with an extreme force of will, managed to plant one under the cover of her journal. The other dropped to the floor and drifted half under her bed.

It only went there because the effort to put the first in a more conspicuous location drained him. Still, he felt more positive than he had in a long time, and he grinned to himself.

_tbc_


	5. Chapter 5

Beetlejuice fled the bathroom. Although he’d been imbued with some fine additional pluck when Lisette managed to blurt out the wrong part of his name over a week ago, he was still weak enough that he didn’t physically slam into the door or wall as he scrambled out. Still, something--a faint, errant puff of a air, a shadow moving by itself--must have alerted the woman in the bathtub, because she stopped what she was doing and sat up more fully.

Beetlejuice had seen more than enough to know she’d finished anyway.

Earlier, while he drifted in his favorite corner of her bedroom, she’d been writing in her stupid journal again. He’d been dozing, still trying to think how to slip his name onto her tongue. He was a bio-exorcist, damn it, and it was his nature to drive breathers out of a residence! But even with the extra vigor he’d been granted, he couldn’t actually _do_ much of anything. He’d moved her things. He’d opened closed doors, and vice versa. Food was easy to spoil. But that was all child’s play, poltergeist bullshit. He needed something more than that, because he swore her dull presence and her lack of reaction to the babyish haunting he’d managed was making his lethargy worse. 

Was she stupid or something? He’d have thought from her reaction when she touched him that she was at least slightly sensitive to otherworldly phenomenon, but she never grew upset, frustrated or confused by the little things he’d done to try and indicate his presence. She closed the doors he’d opened. She sighed at finding moldy bread and threw it away. She searched for her pens and didn’t seem alarmed when she found them in a closet, or under the sink, or in the tea kettle. 

She’d found the crumpled, stained business card her journal. He knew she did, because it was on her bedside table now instead of where he’d left it. Not even its appearance gave her pause. 

What was with her? It was just his luck to have the dumbest, least aware person on the planet rent this fucking house. 

Lost in his thoughts, Beetlejuice almost missed seeing Lisette get up, strip naked, and drop her clothes in a messy heap on the floor. When he realized what she’d done, it surprised him enough that she had time to walk out of the bedroom, nude, and down the hall to the bathroom before he caught up with her again. 

She was bent over the claw foot bathtub, fiddling with the tap for some time to get the correct water temperature. Beetlejuice admired the view from behind, and seriously considered stepping up against her, taking her hips and giving her a little groin on ass thrust . . . just to see if he’d be noticed. What better way to introduce a tenant to the idea the house was haunted than being humped by an invisible entity?

But before he could attempt the maneuver, Lisette let the faucet run and left the room. Curious, Beetlejuice followed her down to the kitchen. Since she was still naked, he scurried past her on the stairs to get a better look at her front. Not that he hadn’t seen her nude before; he’d watched her bedtime routine and in the shower! People were always less shy when they thought they were alone! But he’d not seen the way her tits bounced as she took each step. Nor had he really seen how her thighs brushed together as she walked, which drew his attention to the thatch of hair at their junction--

Beetlejuice grinned and licked his teeth as he ogled, voyeuristically, at her. 

She made her way into the kitchen. He watched her pick and choose from the little vials lined up on the counter--oh jesus, they were essential oils, weren’t they? Some kind of homeopathic, quackery horseshit, Beetlejuice thought, rolling his eyes--select two, grab the filled gallon jug that always sat on the counter plus another empty one, and head back upstairs. 

Curious, and frankly a little aroused by her stark nudity as she boldly walked through the house, he continued to trail her. Watching her ass as she walked up the stairs was just as nice as seeing her from the front.

Once back in the bathroom, Lisette slowed the flow into the tub. She let a few drops from the tiny vials fall under the spray, filling the air with the scent of lavender and rose. She stuck a hand in the water already there, testing its depth and temperature, and then did some odd pouring and filling the water jugs: one to another, then topping it off with water from the tap, before pouring it into the tub. She repeated this convoluted process multiple times. 

Beetlejuice couldn’t fathom the reasoning behind it. Maybe it had something to do with diluting the oils? It grew so repetitious he actually yawned and considered leaving the room. Just as he made his decision, however, Lisette finished, turned off the tap, and set the jugs down beside the tub. 

Without the water running, it was suddenly quiet in the room. Steamy now, too. Lisette grabbed two towels, dropped them beside the tub, and stepped into it. She let out a sigh as she submerged herself in the warm water. 

She relaxed in the bath, sighing again. Beetlejuice wandered closer to the bathtub, eager for an eyeful of the soaking wet woman.

Out of nowhere, Lisette exclaimed, “Oh shit!” and sat straight up in the tub, sloshing water out.

It startled him and Beetlejuice jumped backward. What was going on? Did she see him?!

“I forgot my book!” Lisette chided herself, clucking her tongue.

Beetlejuice felt the anticipatory hope that he’d affected her fade away. The water she splashed onto the floor would have drenched his legs if he’d had a physical form. As it was, he felt minor dampness and some warmth from it; that was a good sign that he was continuing to gain some strength, but it wasn’t enough. 

Disappointed, he sat down in the pooled water that had been sloshed onto the floor.

Despite her obvious frustration she had nothing to read, Lisette didn’t climb back out of the bathtub. She hummed a little, and repeated those mostly mouthed prayers to herself with her eyes closed. 

That caught Beetlejuice’s attention; there may be the possibility she’d slip and say shoggoth again. Or even-- _dare he hope?!--_ his name! She’d found the crumpled, stained card in her journal, hadn’t she? He didn’t remember it looking so ratty or singed around the edges, but it’d been through a lot and that didn’t matter anyway; the words were still legible. 

Her lack of reaction to the card was vexing and curious. He’d watched her with bated breath as she sounded out the syllables in his name, but she had no voice at all while she did it; it was even quieter than her prayers. She hadn’t said his name yet, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t! 

But he didn’t hear his name from her lips or feel the pull of it either; the rare times a breather had uttered his name it was like a harpoon driven into his gut. The word latched onto his spine like a hook and dragged him into the land of the living. It was a glorious mix of pain and pleasure, that feeling, made sweeter by the final destination he craved so much. He lost himself in the memory of it for a moment.

A tiny cry, just a decibel louder than her prayers, made him open his eyes again.

From his vantage point near the floor, he couldn’t see anything but the top of her head. She’d sunk deeper into the bath. 

The same noise came from Lisette again, and Beetlejuice stood up to see what she had to be crying about.

The sight that greeted him made his jaw come unhinged. 

She wasn’t crying. At least, not because she was upset. 

Lisette had a hand between her legs. The other cupped her own breast, pinching her nipple to a hard peak. The fingers at her groin moved in circles, and she gave the same little cry every now and then.

Getting over his surprise, Beetlejuice put his hands on the edge of the tub to lean over it a bit. Lisette didn’t react, of course, except to move her hand a little faster, which he didn’t think was for his benefit, even if he liked it. The water in the bath sloshed with her movements, and that plus the position of her leg obscured his vision of the action. With no hesitation, Beetlejuice left the floor to hover over the bathtub for a less obstructed view.

Now he could see her entire body, laid out in the confines of the cast iron tub. She hadn’t dunked her head, but the hair underwater floated around her shoulders. Her eyelids fluttered and her gaze was vacant; she was more focused on her body than her surroundings. Both nipples were tightened and occasionally broke the surface of the water as her movements became less restricted. The hand between her legs moved further down, and she opened her legs and braced her knees against the sides of the tub as her fingers explored more. 

Above her, the front of his trousers were suddenly too tight. Beetlejuice popped the button and unzipped them, freeing his cock, pulling on it leisurely.

Lisette had no clue he was watching her in this private moment, nor that he was stroking himself as he did. She was lost in the pleasure of her own making. Beetlejuice could tell when she breached herself with her own fingers; she gasped more loudly and lifted her hips at the same time. Her hand moved with greater intent then, and her moans matched it.

Beetlejuice’s own hand did too. The fabric of his clothing was annoying, but there also something wicked about jerking off with all his clothes still on and just his dick out. He supposed moral breathers would consider it perverted or dirty, but he couldn’t care less. They’d obviously never tried it. 

Lisette’s other hand released her nipple and snaked down to her groin as well. The first still thrust into her; the second found the spot that made her cry out. Her voice was fuller now as she stimulated herself both ways. She continued to keep the tension in her legs so they were open but tight against the sides of the bathtub to support herself, and that gave Beetlejuice a much better view than if she’d closed her thighs over her hand.

His hand gripped and released his cock. It was hard to match her movements now, as fast as they were, so he focused on the head, giving it a twist every now and then interspersed with a stroke. He imagined being between her legs, her pussy engulfing his cock, so warm against his cold skin it would almost feel like putting his cock in fire. It would be so fucking amazing to sink balls’ deep into her cunt--

Lisette tensed entirely with a prolonged cry. Before she relaxed, Beetlejuice came too, with a groan she didn’t hear, spilling his release into his hand. It’d been so long since he’d jerked off with a live woman present it felt like his balls emptied. In the tub, Lisette let all the tension she’d been holding go, savoring the last of her orgasm. Everything below him became still.

As his cock pulsed through the last of its ejaculation, a drop of semen fell from his hand and ‘plopped!’ right into the water between her knees. 

It was audible, and because his ejaculate was more viscous than water, it twisted and made a trail as it sank.

Lisette lifted her head with a startled expression. She stared at the now dissipating drop, then looked up. 

She didn’t see him. She couldn’t see him! Beetlejuice thought with a mix of frustration and disappointment. There was actual _physical_ proof of him! She stared _right at him,_ floating above her, exposed with his dick in his hand, then her eyes continued upward passed him to the ceiling before dropping them back down to the water with her eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement.

With an annoyed growl, Beetlejuice went back to the floor. It seemed so close! She had to have seen _something!_ He shoved himself back into his trousers, wiped his hand peevishly on one of the towels she’d dropped on the floor and left the bathroom. Still overcome with frustration, he barely heard Lisette lift herself higher out of the tub. 

He definitely did not see her looking at the doorway after him. 

_tbc_


	6. Chapter 6

He didn’t realize it was possible to be in an even fouler mood. Forget the business cards. A drop of his spunk landed right between her knees! Out of nowhere a gob of jizz hit the water! What in the actual fuck did she think it was?! A drop of water appeared from a non-existent leak in the roof?!

The only thing non-existent in this fucking house is me, Beetlejuice thought blackly. 

When there was still no acknowledgement of him, no fear, no investigation, not even any goddamned curiosity, his rage fizzled out. It left him in a dismal place. He felt small and hollowed, like a husk, and thought more than once that the Lost Souls room couldn’t be any worse than this. When the bureaucracy wanted to punish someone, they sure as fuck knew how to twist the knife and cause the most damage. Beetlejuice would have tipped his hat to them, if he didn’t hate the Netherworld so fucking much.

He drifted aimlessly, lifelessly, in his corner of the room. He rarely even turned his head when Lisette was around; the cracks in plaster of the wall held his interest now. He felt closer to crying than he had in centuries, but what the fuck would that accomplish?

Beetlejuice didn’t know how long he stayed in that corner. A day? A week? A month? Till the sun was about to burn out? Time had no meaning.

But words still did. Despite his best efforts, when Lisette clearly spoke the word, “Shoggoth,” again, he lifted his head to look blearily over to her. 

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, in pyjama pants but only wearing a bra for a top, staring down into her journal. She seemed upset, scribbling notes into the book with a fervor he’d not witnessed before. At one point she grimaced and underlined something so many times the page tore. Then she threw up her hands and dropped everything to the quilt.

She buried her face in her hands for a moment. 

Whatever her frustration was, it was a negative enough emotion to interest him. And she was basically topless again, which was always a bonus. Beetlejuice let himself descend from his corner near the ceiling like gravity actually worked on him, and settled on the mattress to her right. 

He leaned over a bit, to read whatever it was that was affecting her, but at the moment Lisette slammed the journal shut irritably, leaving the pen trapped in its pages. 

Beetlejuice scowled. Annoyance flashed through him, and he went to flick her on the cheek. It wouldn’t be to sip any life force, although the minor touch would be a nice pick-me-up. It would just let him … he didn’t know! Do something! Let her know she pissed him off!

But just as his fingers were near her face, Lisette turned her head. He only touched her hair, and she batted at him again like he was a gnat, just like her first night in this fucking house. Her fingertips grazed the side of his hand, sending a tiny warmth radiating out from the point of contact, but then she scooted off the bed opposite of him with an exasperated sigh and left the room, mindlessly shaking her hand as she went, like it had fallen asleep.

The sadness that he’d kept himself wrapped in threatened to pull him into its folds again. That was easiest. Nothing mattered. He didn’t matter. It was the price he was supposed to be paying for all his transgressions.

But before he succumbed to it, a hot burst of rage clawed its way through the suffocating despair. He wasn’t going to rot in this house while the stupidest woman in the world just lived her life in it!

With a roar that he knew only he could hear, Beetlejuice leapt from the bed, making it squeak. He flung an arm out over the bedside table. The wrath that fueled him gave him the strength to physically knock her stupid fucking books and the lamp over as well, sending everything crashing to the floor. The ceramic lamp shattered. 

The books fell open and he saw he’d torn their dust jackets. 

He shoved the wrought iron bed frame into the dresser, using enough force to gouge the wood, then he flipped the bed, mattress and all, upright on its side against the other piece of furniture. His anger was enough that he grabbed her clothing through the bed and dresser drawer and pulled them out, sending them into a whirlwind of ripping chaos throughout the room. 

The maelstrom created by his rage made the floorboards groan and the glass in the windows creak. Cracks appeared in the plaster on the walls, and a more substantial crack split the ceiling. The overhead light swung erratically. Dust drifted down and was immediately caught in the gale, giving it a more solid appearance, with particulates occasionally reflecting the light.

Shards of glass from the broken lamp were swept up too, as well loose papers like his cards, and her pen.

It felt marvelous to be this powerful again, even if it was only going to last momentarily. 

There was no way for Lisette to deny anything now! This room was going to be wrecked! Like a tornado hit it! He was going to laugh and laugh in his corner when she saw it! He was going to carve his name into the floorboards with a piece of glass. He was going to take her now torn socks and panties and spell his name out with them. He would cut into his own hand and smear his name in ectoplasmic blood in her precious journal and she would say finally it and he’d be here again and it would be glorious–-

As Beetlejuice snatched a shard of glass from the air so hard it sliced his palm, his foot caught the “Twilight” book he’d thrown to the floor. It spun a little, staying open. He glanced at it. 

He’d never read “Twilight”, but he was pretty sure it was written on standard white paper with standard black print. 

The pages in this book were tea stained brown. The writing inside was calligraphy, and the ink was a faded ochre. 

What the–-?

Beetlejuice bent over to have a closer look.

The unholy tempest he’d created knocked “Outlander” against his heel. It was the same. No mass market hardback here; it had the same antique parchment and faded text inside. It wasn’t written in English. Maybe it was French? But some of it looked Arabic, and there was a drawing he glimpsed that niggled the far reaches of his mind and gave him a pleasurable little shiver. The wind made the pages flip erratically, and then snapped the book shut. The dust jacket that proclaimed it was covering “Outlander” lied. 

He reached out to grab it for a closer look, but couldn’t quite make contact with it. That made no sense; he wasn’t that weak. He would be soon though; the storm of his rage was already tapering in his confusion. Both books, however, scraped along the floor away from him, to join the whirlwind in the center of the room.

Puzzled, Beetlejuice stopped. He stood like a statue, one hand outstretched towards a book that wasn’t within reach any longer. It didn’t make sense. 

Something fluttered under the upturned bed. 

Lisette’s journal.

It was caught between one of the iron legs and dresser. Beetlejuice went to it, crouched down, and released it. He could touch this leather bound book with no problem, which only deepened the mystery of the other one. His palm left a bloody smear on the cover.

If he’d expected to find the diary of a boring woman who should probably just post her daily pap on Facebook, he was mistaken. He started slow, then began flipping wildly through the handwritten pages. They were filled with nonsense ramblings and sketches:

“–-full moon, quarter moon, new moon IS BEST–-”

“–-mixture of myrrh and sand; use a crow’s feather for dark or a blue jay’s feather for light–-”

“–-Tindalos-–”, with a never-ending circle repeated over and over on the page–

–-a penciled drawing of some archaic symbol in various sizes–

“–-shoggoth as described-–”

“–-do not, repeat, NOT look at it directly. Use a mirror, or put your eyes out-–”

Wait, shoggoth?

_Shoggoth?!_

Beetlejuice pulled the book open to that page so hard the spine cracked. He skimmed the page:

“-–a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming … shoggoth as described by Lovecraft. Would an Elder Sign work? No mention of any abilities to mate. But the mere fact that Shoggoth is used as a name may suggest otherwise–-”

If he’d had to breathe, Beetlejuice would have felt like all the air had been kicked from his lungs. 

What was this? What did this mean? His head was in a bigger whirl than the dying cyclone behind him. He didn’t understand! How could this stupid woman have his name in her book, and obviously be trying to put down her thoughts in the matter?!

He had to find her. He had to understand what the fuck was going on. Beetlejuice released everything that had been swirling in the air to drop into a mass on the floor. He kept hold of Lisette’s journal. He was going it find her and find a way to make her explain all this–=

“Beetlejuice!”

Something punched him in the gut and grabbed his innards. It was the most beautiful hurt in the world: his name.

SHE SAID HIS NAME.

His name was an irresistible pull; he didn’t want to and he couldn’t deny it. Like he’d been stung, he scrambled to the bedroom door, grabbing hold of the doorframe to assist turning into the hallway.

“Beetlejuice!”

SHE SAID HIS NAME A SECOND TIME.

Beetlejuice grinned. He’d go to her. He’d be right beside her and when the last syllable of the third repeat fell from her lips he’d be visible and free and he’d fucking kiss her right on her breather mouth before making her piss her pants and run screaming for the door. 

The pull was stronger now. If he’d tried to resist, he’d split in two. In his haste and forgetting he was spectral, Beetlejuice slipped on the floor; he caught himself and continued running on all fours for a moment, before he could right himself again. He tugged at the crotch of his trousers with the hand that wasn’t holding her journal; he’d gotten a hard-on.

Her voice was coming from the small bedroom, the one with the “good light”; he wanted to get there and stand in glory when that final, orgasmic moment arrived that would free him–-

Beetlejuice crashed through the partially opened door of the small bedroom. If he had needed to pant for air, he would have. As it was, a wordless, pathetic keening noise escaped his mouth. 

_This was it, this was it, this was it-–!_

As he burst into the room, several things happened at once. The journal he’d been holding was plucked out of his grip. A hand shoved him hard between the shoulder blades, making pleasure radiate through his chest. He stumbled forward with the extra momentum, but something was wrong; for a split moment he slowed, like moving through molasses. He sucked in a mouthful of dust, then the sensation was gone and he tumbled forward, off balance, falling to his knees and skidding on the floor in real time.

The pleasure from being touched by a live person ate away the pain in his knees from the floorboards. 

That meant he had at least one foot in the living world; just one more time, just three more syllables and he was out! 

Beetlejuice twisted on his knees to face Lisette. He was sure the expression on his face was needy desperation, and he was still making that whining pleading noise.

She was ignoring him, hastily drawing a line and writing symbols on the wooden floor between him and the door. The thick piece of chalk she used quickly wore away and left dust hanging in the air. 

Although he didn’t understand exactly was what happening, Beetlejuice got up and rushed towards Lisette. At his movement she awkwardly pushed herself to her feet, clutching her journal to her chest. She looked concerned but stood her ground. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to grab her and beg her to say his name one last time, or strangle her.

He made it to the chalk line when he hit a wall. He couldn’t move one step closer to her. He looked right and left and saw the same chalk circle and writing on the floor, surrounding him, corralling him, _trapping him._

Realization came quickly and his wordless plea died. Beetlejuice snarled. He threw himself at the invisible barrier, pounding at it, and was repelled. 

One step away from him, Lisette let out a breath. 

She stared him directly in the eye as she said, “I wasn’t sure that was going to work.”

_tbc_


	7. Chapter 7

Lisette didn’t say anything else. She looked frazzled and was breathing a little heavily, and after staring at what she’d written on the floor, she licked her lips and ran a hand through her hair. 

Then she left the room, holding onto her journal so tightly her knuckles were white.

Beetlejuice screamed into the void as she disappeared through the door. All his frustration, all his disbelief, all his rage was channeled into the noise; it was as if what he’d felt in the bedroom was simply a precursor to this, a warmup to the anger he felt right now. In his agitated state, it was a little difficult to wrap his head around all of it, plus he still didn’t understand everything that was happening. 

What he did know was that Lisette, this renter, this intruder, this nobody, this bitch knew his name. Said his name! Knew what it would do! And then tricked him!

There was nothing but him in the circle. There was nothing for him to rip apart, or sweep into a whirlwind of chaos. With nothing but himself, Beetlejuice slammed himself against the invisible barrier again and again and again again again--

The chalk Lisette had used was white. It was applied thickly; the symbols and writing looked vaguely familiar to him, like an itch in the back of his brain. He was trapped inside them, and couldn’t touch or scuff them no matter how hard he pushed against whatever barrier they made. 

When he finally ran out of energy, when he was finally bruised and battered and bloody, he collapsed into an awkward sit on the floor. He was fuming but forced himself to be outwardly calm. Looking over his prison, he finally saw that the chalk circle was mirrored on the ceiling, a complete circle that she had finished already, allowing no escape that direction. Besides himself, inside the circle was bare, not even any rug, just the hardwood floor. He picked at a gap between the floorboards with a ragged nail.

The abuse he’d just put his body through began repairing itself. Although he bled, he was not fully in the living world, so his injuries faded more quickly. 

The soft sound of footsteps alerted him she was coming back. Beetlejuice sat a little straighter.

Still in the soft pants but with a tank top over her bra, she entered the room. She’d brought her journal back, plus the two books he glimpsed the contents of from her bedroom. She put them in a pile on the floor near the doorway.

“You’ve made a hell of a mess in my bedroom.”

Her opening gambit needed some work, Beetlejuice thought.. Despite tricking him, he wasn’t positive she could see him. He grinned to himself, thinking he still had some aces up his sleeve, trying to work the angles of either having her say his name or letting him out. 

“Does that smile mean you’re proud of yourself?” Lisette asked. “Acting like a run of the mill poltergeist?”

His smile twisted into more of a snarl. She _could_ see him.

When he didn’t reply, she sighed.

“You’re not a poltergeist,” she announced, then plopped down onto the floor too, landing cross-legged near her books. She grabbed the pseudo-Twilight book and opened it, flipping through the pages as she continued talking, sounding distracted. “I can understand why people thought you _were_ a poltergeist. All the moving shit around. Slamming doors. You know, the stereotypical stuff. Aha!”

She found whatever it was she was looking for, jamming a finger into the text. 

“But even though all this applies to you, there’s so much that doesn’t.”

Lisette said that line like it was an accusation, and looked directly at him again. Beetlejuice lowered his chin and glared at her from under his brows. They stared at each other for a moment, until Lisette decided he wasn’t going to fill in any blanks for her. 

“So what are you? A ghost? A demon? From another dimension? The worst time traveler ever, getting stuck sort of out of synch with this plane?”

Beetlejuice lifted his lip in a non-subtle warning, then exploded forward, shifting from human to a being conjured from nightmares: a combination of insect and kitten, black smoke and tentacles, eyes randomly appearing and disappearing on his form. He roared as he rushed her too, and hit the barrier with a resounding splintering cacophony.

She jumped a little, which made him grin with mouthfuls of broken, rotten teeth. So she wasn’t as calm and collected as she wanted to appear. Beetlejuice watched her worked hard to pull herself back together. 

As his amorphous form continued to press against the barrier, she cleared her throat and said, 

“Thank you. That information will help me narrow it down.”

Then she got to her feet and left again.

The nightmare form collapsed back into his more familiar shape and skin. Beetlejuice sat down again, turning her last statement over and over in his head. That was a lie! She’d had to consult books just to make sure he wasn’t a fucking poltergeist! She was bluffing. She didn’t know much about him, and he hadn’t helped her.

She’d left the books behind, however, and he eyed them warily.

⁂

If he’d thought his punishment of being trapped in this fucking house while he had barely any energy was an ordeal, it was nothing compared to being stuck in a relative corner of it while having some power. Lisette had said his name twice, and that was so sweet he had almost drooled like a dog in anticipation. 

Beetlejuice fairly buzzed with vitality, comparatively. He paced the circle, hoping it made him look like a tiger in a cage just waiting for the proper moment to attack its captor, knowing full well it made him look broken and insane. 

He heard Lisette puttering around in the kitchen, opening and shutting cabinets. Making a snack? 

“I’d make a snack out of you,” he muttered to himself, before realizing the Freudian slip. His thoughts lingered on old Freud for a moment, wondering if the psychotherapist was enjoying his time working through the endless backlog of people in the Netherworld. 

He waited for her to return. 

When the light faded outside the windows as the sunset and it became night, he was still waiting.

_tbc_


	8. Chapter 8

Lisette didn’t enter the room again until the next day. Beetlejuice had given up pacing and sat sullenly on the floor. His picking at the small gap between the floorboards didn’t do anything but tear his fingernails.

She reappeared and took her own cross-legged seat beside her pile of books again. She’d brought another one with her, and opened it, letting it rest in the fabric of her skirt.

Studying Beetlejuice intently for a moment, she turned her focus to the pages.

“Nope,” she said, and turned to a new page.

She looked at him again. 

“Nope.”

Back and forth, back and forth. 

“Nope.”

“No.”

“That’s not it.”

She was obviously studying him. He’d done enough studying of her already. The repetitive motion and her insistance of talking to herself was beyond annoying. Despite a half-formed resolve to sit and wait, to observe her without giving her anything in return, to learn how best to: one, get himself released from this cage and two, exploit her, Beetlejuice clenched his fists. His self-control crumbled; that was always his downfall.

“What in the fuck are you doing?!” he bellowed.

Lisette, who’d been thumbing through the book in her lap at that moment, looked up at him again with a slight smile. 

“So you _can_ talk.”

Beetlejuice’s lips curled downward, and he refused to drop his eyes from hers.

“There’s nothing I can really pin you on in _Tobin’s Spirit Guide,”_ she told him casually, flippantly, like this was some kind of game. She slammed the book shut and set it to the side of the other pile of three. “I didn’t really think you’d be in there. It only has passing mention of shoggoths. I kind of figured I was going to need something a little more esoteric.”

She grabbed the book written in French, hidden under the “Outlander” dustjacket. She began reading through it silently, her finger trailing through it, marking her place on the pages. Occasionally her lips moved, but with her head partially down he couldn’t read what word she was mouthing. French wasn’t his best language anyway. 

He’d already made it clear he could see, respond, and speak to her, so there was no use pretending he couldn’t. 

“You think you’ll find answers in _Al Azif?”_ he asked sarcastically, in a low voice. 

Lisette flicked her gaze back to him.

“Yeah right. Like I’d carry a copy of that around,” she replied disdainfully. “Even if Miskatonic University didn’t deny they had a copy, they’d never let it leave the campus.”

He watched her gaze become sharper. 

“You called it by its original title.”

He didn’t say anything.

“That’s interesting.”

He still didn’t say anything. Lisette continued to study him. It was just as annoying now as it had been earlier, like he was a specimen in a jar. When it once again became obvious he had clammed up, she gave herself a shake.

She held up the book from her lap. 

“This isn’t the Necronomicon,” she told him, like she was presenting to a class. “This is a shitty, incomplete copy of _Cultes des Goules._ It was the best I could bring, since I wasn’t exactly sure what--or who, which is you, of course--was residing in this house. 

“I have to return it to someone who copied it secretly from the Church when we’re done here.”

The last part of her sentence echoed ominously through his brain. Out loud, he demanded, “What do you mean by that? When we’re done here?”

She smiled sweetly at him. “This house has a reputation! No one stays long. No one can stay long. Because it’s haunted, you know.” Lisette winked at him. “I’m here to get rid of whatever’s causing all the problems. And between you and me--”

She looked around, like what she was going to reveal a secret she didn’t want anyone else to hear, and dropped her voice in mock conspiratorial tone.

“--I think you might be the issue.”

A literal dark cloud of surrounded him, obscuring Beetlejuice’s view of her. Smug little breather! He’d show her, when he got out of this circle! She'd learn how irresponsible it was to wake him up, tease him, and trap him! He’d grab her, force her to her knees in front of him; with his hand tight in her hair he’d pull her head back to the proper position and she would gasp but lick her lips and her mouth would fall open and she’d look up at him with wide eyes in anticipation and--no, _no!_ He’d grab her and put her over his knee and push that skirt to her waist and pull down her panties because skin on skin was a much better way to (spank) teach her a lesson--

By the time the confusing cloud of anger-turned-arousal dissipated and he wasn't lost in his own thoughts, Beetlejuice found himself alone in the room again.

_tbc_


	9. Chapter 9

Next morning, bright and early with the sunrise, she was back with a new book under her arm. She was eating a piece of toast, and shoved the last of the crust into her mouth as she entered. She wiped her lips with her thumb, and he was oddly ashamed that he watched that gesture with much interest.

"Oh! Do you want something to eat?" she asked by way of greeting, like she was a thoughtless hostess and this was a perfectly normal situation. "Do you _need_ to eat?"

Beetlejuice, who had spent the rest of the night alone trying to understand why his thoughts had gone to different sexual scenarios he could engage in with her instead of a rage that should have been more appropriate, shook his head. 

He'd sort through the thorny mess of his libido some other time, he had decided. Lisette was trying to figure him out; he would do the same to her. Time would tell who would win this stalemate.

"I can, but I don't," he replied. "It's been years since I had a cigarette, though. You got any?"

She looked surprised he answered her as if it were a real conversation, like they were buddies. Beetlejuice waited for a moment, then made a circling motion with one hand to indicate he was waiting for an expecting a response. 

"Uh . . no. I don’t."

"Of fucking course you don’t. Nobody smokes anymore," he muttered, disappointed.

She tapped her forefinger on her chin for a moment, then left the room, leaving the door open. 

He’d been left in isolation again so quickly? Beetlejuice once again heard her rummaging through the kitchen, then there was silence. After minutes passed, she came back up the stairs. The treads and the floorboards in the hallway creaked with each footstep, and then she was back in the bedroom with him. She was holding something, and in the crook of her arm was one of the stainless steel canisters from under the cabinets in the kitchen.

“I don’t have any cigarettes,” she told him again, sounding apologetic. “Can you roll your own?”

Beetlejuice cocked his head in confusion. She held out her hands; in one was a box of stick matches, in the other, a cardboard box of rolling papers. She opened the small canister to show him dried, shredded leaves inside. The faint scent of tobacco wafted to him.

“You don’t have cigarettes but you have the stuff to _make_ cigarettes?” he asked drily. 

Lisette shrugged. “The tobacco can be used in different rituals. The matches are just matches. The rolling paper . . . well, I didn’t buy it for tobacco, specifically.”

Despite himself, Beetlejuice laughed. “You’ve got a stolen forbidden book, you’ve captured _me,_ and you’re embarrassed to say out loud you smoke weed?”

A blush crept over her cheeks and she laughed too. “Yeah. I guess. Marijuana is legal in Connecticut for medical purposes, but not just for fun. Would you prefer that instead of tobacco?”

The thought of a joint instead of a cigarette was tempting; it’d been even longer since he’d taken a hit than simply had a smoke. It would be simple and innocent enough to light one up, and offer her a toke, like people do, and maybe she’d accidently break the barrier . . .

“You wanna join me?” Beetlejuice asked.

Lisette shook her head. “No thanks. Too early in the day for me.”

He hid his disappointment and filed that information away for later. 

“Cigarette it is, then.”

With no further hesitation, Lisette tossed him the supplies one at a time, the canister, then the small box of rolling papers. As for the matches, she removed all but one from the box before passing it along. Each of them passed over the chalk inscriptions with no problem, which was interesting tidbit of information: things could enter the circle, he just couldn’t leave. Beetlejuice caught them all, and occupied himself with the task of making his own cigarette.

It had been a while since he had, so it took a little time for the proper technique to come back to him. As he struggled a bit getting the paper tight enough around the tobacco, he groused, 

“If you’re used to rolling joints, why didn’t you just make a cigarette for me and throw that into this prison?”

Lisette looked a little surprised, as if that hadn't occurred to her, but answered, “You didn’t ask!”

He gave her a look that conveyed his exact thoughts on that amount of pettiness, then licked the free edge of the paper standing upright between his fingers and pressed it down. It was slightly looser than he would have liked and it had a shitty crutch he made out of the thin cardboard he found in the box of rolling papers instead of a real filter, but a smoke after who knows how many years was a treat anyway. Beetlejuice lit the match by flicking it against his thumbnail, and once the end of the cigarette was going, stuck it in his mouth. 

His first inhale of a corporeal cigarette in ages was bitter and hot. 

It was great.

Beetlejuice let himself be lost in the physical act of smoking for a moment. It suddenly hit him that not only had this breather said his name twice, drawing him three-quarters into the living world, but whatever arcane techinque she used to keep him in this circle made that three-quarters last longer than it ever had before. This situation wasn’t perfect, but that was a nice little bonus. 

Lisette sat quietly with her skirt hiked up passed her knees. Idly he wondered if she was wearing any panties. Beetlejuice kept a lungful of smoke in longer than would be comfortable, then let it out in a stream that twisted a little like a Sandworm. That trick usually made a breather nervous, since it looked a little alive, but the woman near the wall didn’t react to it. 

Instead, she went back to her books, flipping through pages, leaving them open on the floor, writing notes in her journal, and cross-referencing things. Beetlejuice watched her research and wondered to himself what exactly she was thinking. 

After his cigarette was gone and she was still absorbed in her books, he asked, 

“Figured anything out yet?”

She glanced up at him with an annoyed expression pinching her face. “No.”

He scooted along the floor to be closer to her. The chalk circle she’d drawn was four inches wide, so with her leaning against the wall by the door, her knees were less than a foot away from him. He could reach out and grab her, if this barrier was down.

Beetlejuice craned his head to try and read the books upside down. 

“Is that a Bible?” 

“Yes,” she replied, distracted, as she continued to scribble.

“Would I be able to touch it?”

She finally looked up, genuinely confused. “What the hell does that mean?”

He nodded towards the other books. “I couldn’t quite touch those two. Earlier. When I, uh, wrecked your room.”

Lisette stared at him blankly for a moment before she understood. “Oh. Right! They have wards on them to prevent non-living beings from interacting with them. Safety precautions, you know. Of course, that doesn’t really help me narrow down ghost versus demon in your case . . .”

She let her voice trail off, then went back to the Bible she’d been perusing. Beetlejuice let her have a few more moments, then just as she was settling back into her work, he interrupted. 

“Which version of the Bible do you have? Is it both Old and New Testament? Do you have a Qur’an? The Torah? The Codex Seraphinianus? The Voynich Manuscript?” 

Lisette returned the look he’d given her earlier: irked. “Why are you asking?”

He shrugged. “Just wondering exactly what you’re using to try and decipher the riddle wrapped in an enigma that is me.”

“With a head that big I’m surprised you made it through the doorframe into this room,” she replied drily. “Of course, you were going full steam. All because I said your name. Interesting.”

Beetlejuice scowled a little, hating to be reminded how desperate he’d been. He let silence fill the room for a few beats. She broke the quiet before he did this time.

“You mentioned _Al Azif._ Not many other texts have information about shoggoths in them. Have you read it? Did you just randomly pick a name from the book? What’s the connection between it, them, and you?”

“Maybe Alhazred named shoggoths after _me,”_ Beetlejuice suggested. 

That made her furrow her brow for a moment, but eventually she shook her head. “No, I only know one account of a shoggoth taking human form.” Even though his lie was dismissed, he saw by the expression on her face some new thought had come to her. Her eyes found his, and excited, she asked, “Were you there when Alhazred _wrote_ it?”

“Maybe,” Beetlejuice hedged. He couldn’t decide if letting her know his age would be a problem.

“Interesting . . .” Lisette repeated, and dropped her eyes back to her journal to write a note. Her mouth moved a little as she did, and it was vaguely similar to the times he saw her praying.

“So you’re pretty devoted, huh?”

Confusion and harder thinking looked the same on her face. “What?”

“You pray a lot. Devoted Catholic, right?” he guessed. Two could play at taking stabs at the other’s truths.

“My grandmother was Catholic, but I wasn’t raised anything,” Lisette admitted.

“Then what are you praying?”

“What? I’m not praying, I’m just talking to myself!”

For some reason, that admission made Beetlejuice laugh out loud. “Jesus. I’ve been alone for _forever_ it seems, and even I don’t do that!” 

Lisette looked slightly offended, which made him laugh harder. 

“Whatever,” she told him, but it was good to see something needled her.

_tbc_


	10. Chapter 10

More days passed, stuck in an incantation circle in a room with nothing to do but be studied by her.

Beetlejuice managed to coax drips and drabs of information out about her: her favorite dessert was brownies; she preferred skirts so her legs weren’t bound by fabric; she’d both read and seen _The Exorcist;_ she was better at reading French than speaking it; and she traveled the country ‘cleansing’ haunted houses (she had discovered she had a talent for it and was serious about her work and truly wanted to help people, although she admitted most houses were not haunted, so she wasn’t too proud to con people to make a living. The rare times it was a genuine haunting, it was a simple thing to either encourage the spectral inhabitants to move on or to just keep quiet and endure their living roommates). 

Lisette, on the other hand, got little information back about him in return. There was little she could pin on him from her books, which made Beetlejuice simply preen egotistically. 

“Maybe you should try _Tobin’s_ again,” he mumbled around the fresh cigarette he’d just put between his lips. Lisette had given him two matches this time, and he considered using the second to light the floor on fire to see if that would destroy the fucking chalk circle. He’d probably just roll another cigarette, though.

“There’s nothing in _Tobin’s!”_ she snapped back, and he grinned at her.

Then he did a double-take; she wasn’t wearing a bra today. Beetlejuice licked his teeth and took another drag off the cigarette. His gaze slipped downward, but from the front he couldn’t tell through her skirt if she had panty lines. 

“Shit!” she cursed in irritation. “Ghost? Demon? Who the hell knows? Do you even know?”

He shrugged with another smile, enjoying her frustration.

“Goddamn it!”

“God’s good at damning things,” he agreed affably.

Lisette stared blankly at him for a moment; he sat quietly and returned the look in companionable silence and blew out smoke. He might be trapped, but he had all the time in the world compared to her. He’d just wait her out. 

Then, something occurred to her. Beetlejuice saw a light come on in her eyes. 

“It can’t be that simple, can it?!” she exclaimed to herself, and she scrambled to her feet. 

“What? Where are you going?” he called after her as she disappeared through the door. 

To his disappointment, he saw she was wearing panties. 

Beetlejuice heard her race down the stairs and back into the kitchen. She must have bumped into the corner of the counter because a faint, “ouch, damn it!” drifted up through the floorboards. There was a clattering, then a pause, then Lisette was taking the stairs two at a time to get back to the second floor. 

Leisurely, he took pulled more smoke into his lungs and took pleasure in watching the end of the cigarette flare red. He did that! He still had one foot in the Netherworld and one foot here.

Lisette burst back into the room holding the plastic gallon jug of water she typically left beside the sink.

“What, you think I’m some kind of spectral plant?” he said, chuckling. “You gonna water me?”

“It’s holy water,” Lisette replied, and in one movement, she popped the cap and threw the liquid right down onto him.

Almost comically, the grin on Beetlejuice’s face morphed to shock. Thinking quickly as he sputtered, he allowed himself to shrink a little bit inside his suit. He added a shriek and a bit of vapor for realism, but thought the clichéd, “I’m melting!” would take it too far. He writhed and moaned and continued to reduce in size, all the while thinking that if he shrunk to almost nothing, like he’d been thwarted and banished because of the holy water, Lisette would break the circle to check, and then he’d have his freedom. 

He’d just have to wait. Small and quiet!

So he melted and lay silently on the floor.

Seconds, then minutes ticked by. He could hear Lisette’s breathing; it was faster than normal from the adrenaline watching him liquify away. He’d have liked to see her tits bounce while she breathed like that. 

Finally, finally, Beetlejuice heard her shuffle a step closer. Any moment now … !

But instead of her stepping over the chalk next to him, he heard her snort in disgust.

“You’re a damn liar!” Lisette announced. 

Startled, but still not willing to give up yet, Beetlejuice didn’t move. 

“Get up, you phony! I guess I can mark ‘odd representation of Loki, the God of Lies’ off my list when it comes to you because you’re not very good at it!”

The distain in her voice hurt. Beetlejuice reappeared in full form again, although dripping wet from the water she threw at him. His hair felt flat and heavy and he shook his head like a dog, spraying water everywhere. Lisette jumped back. 

“You ruined my cigarette!” he complained, holding the soggy butt up. “And look! Fuck! The other match and the rest of the rolling papers are wet too!”

“Oh, cry me a river,” she snapped back, taking a swig out of the jug before closing it and setting it down on the floor. She joined it with a disgruntled sigh, leaning into her own lap with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist, glaring angrily at him.

“No weed for you then, either,” he reminded her. 

She shrugged peevishly. “I’ll get more papers when I go to town later.”

Dramatically he pulled an arm out of his sleeve and wrung the fabric out. Liquid made the wooden floorboards dark, but of course it didn’t affect the fucking chalk.

“I’m so sorry the little bath you gave me didn’t work,” Beetlejuice told her sarcastically. “What gave it away? Was it just plain tap water all along and I fell for the stupidest trick in the book?”

Lisette got up. Her disgust was still written on her face, but he didn’t know if it was because he lied or because whatever she had planned didn’t work. She scooped up all her books and the jug and made to leave the room. At the doorframe she paused and replied, 

“No, it was holy water all right. But I had a bathtub full of it and it didn’t faze you in the least then, so I knew you were lying now!”

She didn’t wait to see his reaction to that fun little piece of information might be. She simply left.

_tbc_


	11. Chapter 11

Beetlejuice didn’t see her for several days.

He heard her, of course. He had nothing else to do but listen, and it was sad how reliant he became on trying to pinpoint where she was and imagining what she may be doing for entertainment. The house was old and everything creaked: the floors and the doors. Lisette had gone into the attic again for some reason, puttering around up above his head. He heard her in the kitchen, and now occasionally he heard the television, and of course he heard her go to her bedroom down the hallway. 

She had to be aware that the house itself advertised where she was, but did she know that her bedsprings also let him know when she was masturbating?

He’d been sitting alone in this room for days, and now it was night again. As he sat and stewed over how this fucking breather had tricked him again by already knowing that holy water didn’t work on him, by lying and forcing him to show his hand about what he might be willing to do to get the fuck out of this prison, Beetlejuice heard the soft, telltale movements of bedsprings under her. They were subtle, and her moans were too, because he had to strain to pick them up. 

Was she doing this on purpose? Was she getting herself off to tease him?! She was baiting him, the little slut--

The same sharper cry that had caught his attention while she was in the bath and that his brain obsessed a little bit over came from her bedroom, and Beetlejuice’s hand went into his trousers. 

Was she naked, he wondered, or did she just push her hand under the elastic of her panties to finger herself? Was she playing with her nipples; did she use two hands on her pussy again like he’d seen in the tub? He fantasized all that and more. 

Like before, he stroked himself in time with her moans. Once again his thoughts drifted to a more active role between the two of them. He wondered how her pussy would taste. He grinned at the thought of her making those sounds with his tongue lapping at her. He imagined the hot wet heat of her mouth on his cock, and how different the hot wet tight heat of her pussy would be. He groaned and instantly checked himself; did Lisette hear that? Did she know he was jerking off listening to her do herself?

He paused his hand and strained to listen again. The soft noises from her bedroom didn’t abate.

With a smile, Beetlejuice let himself work back to an accompanying pace. He couldn’t stop all the moans from passing his lips, but kept them quieter. 

When the sounds from Lisette came to an abrupt halt with a longer gasp, he knew she was done. To feel her come on his cock, her pussy pulsing around him, her back arching, her hands grabbing at his hips to keep him close--fuck, that’d be divine--

Beetlejuice muzzled another groan to keep it quiet and came too. This time he cupped all his release in his hand, then when he returned to his senses he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Well, he was damned anyway, so eventually he rubbed his hand on the floor, leaving a streak of ectoplasmic come on it. 

If that residue was going to bind him to this fucking house, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t been suffering through before. 

The house settled into that silence that meant everything under its roof was sleeping. Or dead. Beetlejuice drifted towards a doze, when he was ambushed by a thought:

_She knew he’d been splashed by the water when she’d taken a bath._

She’d admitted as much when she told him he hadn’t been affected by it, and then only way she could have known that was that she saw him get splashed. 

She’d seen him!

She’d seen him beside the tub, she’d seen that his pant legs and feet had gotten moderately wet when she sloshed water onto the floor! That meant . . . that meant . . .

_She’d seen him above her, jerking off._

If it was possible, Beetlejuice got colder with the realization Lisette had been seeing him for he didn’t know how long. Had she seen him from the start? He tried to wrap his head around this new comprehension. It took him aback. It made him wonder what else he missed, thinking that he was superior to breathers and they were easy to manipulate. 

She had some explaining to do, for sure. But Beetlejuice couldn’t help but grin lopsidely; despite the circumstances, despite the fact he should still be fuming because of her treatment of him, he couldn’t deny a teeny bit of respect for her nosed its way into him. It took skill to con a con artist.

⁂

Lisette came by his room the next morning, bright and early. It was just to look in on him; she didn’t enter the room. Beetlejuice picked up his head and glared at her, but when she turned on her heel to leave again, in the face of another monotonous day he dropped the glare and called, 

“Lisette! Lis! Hey! Come back!”

She hesitated, then complied. This was the first time he’d said her name, and her surprise was written on her face. The only thing she said, however, was, 

“Lonely?” in a sarcastic tone.

“I’ve been lonely more than my life than not,” Beetlejuice replied quietly.

His unexpected sincerity and the sad truth in his voice disarmed her, because she uncrossed her arms and stepped further into the room.

“I’ve spent more time with you since you put me in this circle than I have with any other breather for I don’t know how long,” he continued. 

She eyed him suspiciously. “What is this, some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing?”

“I don’t think the people with Stockholm syndrome admit it.”

“Touché, I guess? So what is it that you wanted?”

“I wanted to know . . .” He paused and figured he had nothing to lose. “. . . I wanted to know how long you’ve seen me.”

Lisette considered his request, then gave a half shrug. “I saw you hanging out in the bedroom when the realtor brought me through.”

Son of a bitch! 

“You looked disheveled and exhausted. As you started following me around, though, there were times you looked livelier. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what you were. I mean, what you are, and man, that’s annoying.”

“Why didn’t you react to me?” he asked, both genuinely curious and a little bit annoyed that he’d had so little effect on someone, when his pride and joy was wrecking havoc.

She shrugged again. “I told you. I didn’t know what you were, so I didn’t know what I needed to do. My job is to get you out of here, but without some kind of information, I didn’t know how to do it. I crossed some things off my list, however, even if I still don’t have an answer.”

It was slightly odd, having a real conversation with her. He kind of enjoyed it. “And what did you cross off?”

Lisette sat down and got comfortable before she answered. She began ticking things off her fingers. “You’re not a ghoul because you’re definitely spectral. I’m still a little confused about the whole ‘shoggoth’ thing, but you’re not anything created by the Elder Gods, because you haven’t reacted to any of the Elder Signs more strongly than anything else written on the floor.”

Beetlejuice glanced at the chalk and could now see the twig-like sigils. She was right; he hadn’t paid them any attention.

Lisette had continued. “You’re not a physical manifestation of a Catholic demon. You’re not a poltergeist. You’re not a soul that just hasn’t moved on because of unfinished business, because you haven’t just ignored me. You’re not an incubus--”

“Hey! How do you know that? I could be an incubus!” he interjected.

She rolled her eyes before locking her gaze with his. “Because you watched me in the bathtub, and you didn’t come down to fuck me.”

So she _had_ seen him with his dick out! If he had the capacity to be embarrassed, he’d have flushed red from his neck to the tips of his hair. Instead, he refused to let her get the upper hand in this exchange. He asked her directly,

“So you were watching me while I was watching you?” 

“Yep.”

He’d already tried to intimidate her with a nightmarish monster, and that didn’t work. He had other tactics to try, however, and maybe they would.

Beetlejuice’s voice dropped to a gravelly seductive tone. “And did it do anything for you, baby?”

Clearly caught by surprise, Lisette actually giggled, and, interestingly, _she_ blushed. “Well . . .”

“Well what, baby?”

“It was . . . hot. And . . . impressive,” she admitted, and the glance she gave to his crotch made it clear what she was talking about. 

Beetlejuice grinned. She wasn’t scandalized. She hadn’t immediately left the room. Which meant she must be a little bit turned on, and obviously more open sexually than she wanted to admit since she let a specter wank off to her masturbating. He pushed himself from a seated position to all fours, and crawled across the floor until he was as close as he could be, hindered by the invisible barrier. 

“Mmm-hmm. I liked watching you too, baby. Were you thinking about me last night too?”

Her eyes widened. Maybe she knew he’d watched her in the tub, and maybe she liked it, but she hadn’t known he could hear her last night. 

He pressed on. “I thought about _you_ last night while I stroked myself. Hearing you moan made me so hard! I thought about how fun it would be, you and me. I bet I’d rock your world, baby, and I _know_ you’d rock mine.”

Lisette’s breath had become more shallow, and her lips had parted a little. The blush hadn’t left her cheeks, and Beetlejuice could see that her pupils were a bit more dilated than they should be in this light. He bet that if he was able to touch her right now, her pulse would be quick and strong, and between her legs would be wet--

“What do you say, baby? I might not be an incubus, but that just means I don’t take and take and take. I _give_ as good as I get. I’ve been around long enough to have learned some really naughty things that I’d love to share with you. Wanna go for a ride?” he asked, and deliberately adjusted himself through the front of his trousers. He watched her watch his hand. 

He used the same hand to reach out imploringly to her. He hadn’t been completely untruthful; he’d welcome the opportunity to fuck her, but getting out of this goddamn circle was paramount.

But as aroused as Lisette was--and there was no way for her to deny it--she didn’t take his hand.

Flustered, she pushed herself up until she was standing and said, “I, uh . . . no, I can’t, Beetlejuice.”

Hearing his name, coupled with actually seeing her mouth form it, gave him a pleasurable shiver. 

“That was beautiful, sweetheart,” he moaned, and wasn’t lying. He wondered if his eyes were as dark with arousal as hers were, as he looked up at her from his knees, still holding a hand out, palm up, beseeching. “Gimme another. Gimme two more, and I promise I’ll treat you like you’re my goddess.”

Lisette licked her lips.

His name spoken three times in a row had the power to break this incantation circle. He could feel it.

“Come on, baby,” he whispered. “Please?”

Her lips pressed together, the start of the first sound in his name. Beetlejuice waited, filled with a buzz of anticipation. 

“I can’t,” she whispered back, breaking the tension. She backed out of the room quickly, even as he called after her desperately. 

Beetlejuice groaned and dropped his hand and head to the floor. He felt weak and didn’t know what to think.

_tbc_


	12. Chapter 12

Another day or two passed, and she didn’t return. Beetlejuice hated that in his boredom he began to _want_ her company, and missed her when she wasn’t paying attention to him. 

He was back to picking at the gap in the floorboards, just for something to do. Lisette continued to wander through the house, but here today was something interesting: the sound of her footsteps changed. Previously the floors creaked but there was a shuffling quality when she walked; now her footfalls were sharper. Clickier. 

She was wearing shoes instead of padding around in bare feet or socks. 

She was going out!

Beetlejuice almost yelled a reminder to get more rolling papers, then almost yelled to just buy some damn cigarettes, but held his tongue.

He heard her walking through the lower floor of the house. Pause by the closet; getting her coat. Now through the living room. Now in the kitchen. Back to the living room; forgot something? Kitchen again, and the unmistakable sound of the wooden inner back door opening. Next the squeaky hinges of the screen door–-

There was no sound from the squeaky hinges of the screen door. 

Beetlejuice cocked his head. Maybe Lisette had oiled those noisy things?

But after several moments, he heard the wooden door again. It had slammed shut. Lisette was walking back through the house, towards the front doors. 

The same sounds drifted up to him: the creak and drag of the heavier wooden door, but no additional squeal from the second set of hinges on the outer door. There was a pause, then a heavy pounding that rattled the door loudly enough to startle him. 

He almost called out to ask what she was doing, but as Lisette’s footsteps hurried back through the kitchen to try the back door again, he decided against it. A second, more frantic, angrier pounding drifted up to him. 

He jammed his fingernail between the floorboards again. 

After several more minutes, Lisette came rushing up the stairs and burst into the room she’d imprisoned him in. Wide-eyed and breathing heavily but obviously angry, she glared at him sitting passively on the floor.

“What did you do?!” she demanded, without preamble.

Beetlejuice looked up with eyebrows raised, conveying the utmost innocence. 

Lisette stormed right up to the very edge of the chalk circle she’d drawn on the floor. Another half-inch, and she’d have smeared the inscription with the toe of her flat. The force of her anger and the underlying fear that drove it radiated to Beetlejuice, and it felt good to invoke such strong emotion.

“I can’t leave the house!” she continued loudly. “The doors won’t open! _What did you do?!”_

Beetlejuice couldn’t help but grin. 

⁂

Because he’d smiled at her while she was upset, he had a hard time convincing her he actually _didn’t_ have anything to do with the fact she couldn’t leave the house. 

“Babes, it wasn’t me! I’m fucking trapped in this fucking circle. How could I manipulate anything in this house?” he told her.

Lisette had bristled at the nickname, but other matters were more pressing. 

“Seriously. The doors! Tell me what you’ve done to the doors!” she replied, standing just as close as she could to him without breaking the chalk lines. 

Beetlejuice stood up to face her and held his hands out. “I can’t even conjure a damn cigarette, baby. I. Am. Stuck. In. Here! I can’t do anything, I haven’t done anything!”

She was panting, breathing through her mouth. There was color high on her cheeks, she’d run a hand through her hair so it was mussed, and despite have applied a touch of mascara, she looked frazzled. Lewdly Beetlejuice wondered if that was how she’d look after a quick lay.

She didn’t completely seem convinced at his innocence. 

“Well, something happened. I can’t get out and that’s a big problem!”

Beetlejuice managed not to smile outwardly again, but inside he was gleeful.

⁂

Later he heard her trying the doors again, with just as much luck as she’d had previously. Then he heard her attempt to open windows. No dice there, either, apparently, because some very creative cursing floated up the stairs to his ears, followed by a scream.

He liked screams. It was a beautiful sound. Most that happened near him were of fright, however, not pure frustration and rage.

He decided he still liked them.

Finally, after she’d wasted a majority of the day trying to exit the house, Beetlejuice heard Lisette tromp back up the stairs. She came into the room that had become his cell, and leaned against the wall, sliding down it into a sit.

“I can’t get out,” she announced in a daze, like she was still trying to wrap her head around it. She looked in his direction, but it took several moments before he could tell she actually saw him. “You didn’t do this?”

“Nope. Cross my heart and hope to die. Again,” he replied, making an exaggerated “x” over his chest. 

Lisette nodded, and her gaze drifted away again. “Okay.”

“Did you try to break the glass in the windows?”

“Yes, and in the doors too …” she replied, in a vague tone. 

“Did you use any tools?”

“Yes …”

“Did you try to cut through the screens in the doors?”

“Yes …”

“And nothing? Not even a crack?”

She shook her head as she whispered, “No.”

Although he was secretly a little pleased she was getting a taste of her own medicine, Beetlejuice wasn’t sure if he liked this soft-talking, bewildered Lisette. Without another word to him, she pushed herself up and crept out of his room. He called her name after her but she ignored him. He heard her get into her bed, and then there was nothing else from her the rest of the day.

_tbc_


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning, she returned with a peanut butter sandwich. Beetlejuice hadn’t eaten in forever, and he didn’t think Lisette had eaten much the day before, and honestly couldn’t remember how long breathers could go without food. 

Like he’d seen her eat before, she shoved most of it in her mouth as she entered, and wiped her hand on her skirt before sitting in her spot against the wall. 

“Still no luck getting outside?” he asked.

“No,” she confirmed, with a shake of her head. At least she wasn’t cowed and mousey now. “I tried the doors and every window downstairs again. I even went into the basement and tried the old coal chute. Nothing opens.”

She looked him dead in the eye. “Tell me again you didn’t do this.”

How many times did he have to goddamn repeat it? “I didn’t do this, baby.”

She narrowed her eyes, but seemed to accept it. “Well, I still think it has something to do with you.”

Beetlejuice rolled his eyes. He had no way to convince her. 

Lisette settled in with her books, journal, and pen in reach, and began going through them much more meticulously than he’d witnessed before. He thought about interrupting her. Instead, he watched her focus on her work, going from one book to another, jotting notes, flipping back to different pages. His mind drifted in the lull, from imagining her naked again, to how much he hated this circle, to how long it might take for her to starve to death. When she died here, would she be stuck in the house too? Would he have a companion, or would she go on to the Netherworld, leaving him alone again?

It slowly dawned on him she was speaking again. 

“--you were trapped here, right? Could your energy have closed off the house?”

Beetlejuice shook his head. “Still not me, babes. If I could’ve done something like that, I would have done it a long time ago and then random breathers wouldn’t bother the hell out of me. And may I remind you again that you fucking trapped me in this fucking circle and I can’t do jack shit?!”

“Hmm . . .” she replied eloquently, not fazed by his sudden outburst, and went back to her books. 

This fucking chalk circle. Christ, he hated it. He couldn’t deny being mostly tangible was nice, which was obviously something to do with the properties of the incantation, but being caged here was horrendous. He thought being confined to the house was bad, but now he realized how good he’d had it. 

This fucking circle. Now Lisette knew what it felt like. Beetlejuice wanted to take sadistic pleasure from the irony, but for some reason, still couldn’t quite dredge it up. 

This circle . . .

A wild thought occurred to him. 

“Lis, let me see the instructions for this incantation circle!” Beetlejuice demanded, out of the blue. 

“What? No!” she automatically replied. 

“Come on, babes, I have an idea!”

She actually held her journal to her chest. “No way! It’s a nice try, with me being desperate and all, but I’m not falling for that trick!”

Beetlejuice ground his teeth. “It’s not a trick! I don’t care about what might be written in there that would help me--” He actually _did_ care, but that wasn’t going to fly at the moment. “--I just have an idea about this fucking circle you drew!”

“And what, pray tell, might that be?”

He didn’t want to lay all his cards on the table. He might have said too much already, and lost any bargaining leverage he might have had. He should hold out, make her give him something in return-- _like his freedom!--_ for his idea. 

But it was too late; Lisette’s brow furrowed and she went back to her books, flipping pages and scanning them quickly. She found whatever she was looking for and studied it. 

“I have the instructions right here,” she said aloud. “I got all the ingredients, I made sure to copy everything to the letter on the floor and ceiling. I drew the proper sigils in salt mixed with oil, then let it all dry for three days before going over them with chalk. Everything was done exactly how it’s written!”

Beetlejuice gave her a half-smile. “Salted oil. Any other liquids go into those initial drawings?”

Lisette cocked her head, thinking. “No . . . wait. A little spit, and a little blood. The instructions were obviously written by a man for a man, because it wanted semen, so I had to modify it.”

The smile that formed completely across his face wasn’t entirely happy. “Babes, you made a mistake.”

“What?” She looked startled, looked at her book, and continued her protest. “No I didn’t! Everything is right! Just because I couldn’t provide semen doesn’t mean it was wrong! Intent is taken into consideration for that sort of thing! I followed what was written in the book!”

Beetlejuice shook his head. “You shouldn’t trust those books, baby. 

“They lie.”

⁂

The look of shock on her face would have been delightful, if he hadn’t grown to kind of like her. 

That realization made his mouth snap shut. What was this? After what she’d done to him, he wasn’t happy she was stuck here? He wasn’t happy that she’d been deceived? What was wrong with him?

Lisette had resorted to muttering, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit--” on repeat while she stared hard into the pages of the books that she’d foolishly relied on.

“Lisette. Lisette, baby! Hey! Snap out of it!” Beetlejuice ordered, snapping his fingers as close to her as possible. He’d deal with his own messed up head later; this might be his ticket out of here. 

She looked up at him, wide-eyed and slightly panicked. 

He softened his voice. “Hey. Why don’t you just tell me what you did, and then maybe we can work it out?”

“You’re still trying to trick me!” she replied wildly. 

“No! No!” Beetlejuice insisted, hands out, trying to project an air of assistance and concern, not creepy old guy trying to capitalize and take advantage of someone. “Trust me, I don’t want _you_ to be stuck here, because then _I’m_ gonna be stuck in this fucking chalk circle for the rest of your life and beyond!”

That might not have been the absolute best thing to admit, but it seemed to work.

With a deep breath, Lisette nodded. 

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what you did?” he asked again. 

Slowly, she did. In a halting voice, she told him about the specific incantation circle she’d used, one designed to capture and hold otherworldly beings indefinitely. She read him the ingredient list she’d worked from. It was referenced from multiple sources, so she’d believed it was accurate and safe. She still refused to show him the insides of her books, but Beetlejuice was able to glean enough about it to understand both its power and its true intended use. 

“You created a trap for me,” he explained, “and it worked. Your problem is two-fold, baby. One, you used your blood to catch me, so my restrictions regarding this fucking house got transferred to you. 

“Second, you did just what the creatures who wrote the instructions--no, _men_ didn’t write them, damn it!” he said loudly, over her objections over who--or what--authored the books. To her credit she shut up and he explained, “The books were written with a man’s _hand,_ but they were fucking possessed, okay? Understand?! It was all so things that aren’t supposed to be here had a conduit. So. You’ve done what the beasts actually wanted, which is human essence. Blood, spit, jizz--all those are a valuable commodities, and you just gave it away for free.

“The circle was designed to snare _humans._ Most of the beings mentioned in those books travel in packs. You’d get one of them, but then there’s no way for you to escape while the rest devour you. 

“See how elegant it is?”

He’d never been positive if it’d been a good thing he met up with old Alhazred back in the day, but he had learned a lot from the mad man. As he watched Lisette process all that information with tears welling in her eyes however, Beetlejuice thought that this was one of the times was both good and bad to be able to pass on eldritch knowledge.

_tbc_


	14. Chapter 14

Luckily, Lisette wasn’t the type to curl up and cry continuously about a shitty situation. The next day, eating peanut butter right out of the jar with a spoon because she was out of bread, she was back in his room with all her books, not just the heavy-hitters. 

He’d have helped her go through them, but their wards combined with the chalk circle wouldn’t allow him to touch them. The only other was her journal, and she was reluctant to pass it over to him. 

So instead she read passages out loud. Several times he shushed her, and once she’d uttered a name that made him rush the barrier again so quickly he hit it just like the very first day in his urgency to stop her. Some things shouldn’t be poked awake, Beetlejuice warned her, looking over his shoulder and into the corners of the room as if he expected a visit from something especially vile. 

Lisette took his advice and after that held the book up so he could read certain words instead of saying them.

Over the next three days, they came up with exactly nothing. 

Lisette had taken to sleeping on the floor in his room with a pillow and a blanket. Once again, Beetlejuice watched her sleep. It made him feel odd, knowing this breather actively chose to be close to him. He’d lost any advantage he may have had with her; there was no way for him to drive her out of this fucking house now. 

It made him feel even odder to realize he wanted her to be able to leave, but he didn’t want to drive her away.

Finally, on day four, he said,

“If you break the circle, it’ll probably break the connection between you and me.”

There. He offered a chance for her salvation. He said it out loud. She’d probably been thinking it anyway.

Lisette studied him, but didn’t reply. 

Still, he shrugged as though she had. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll still be here, having the time of my afterlife in this beautiful house in a quintessential New England town.

“You only said my name twice, babes. I’m not free, but you will be,” he continued, like it meant nothing to him even though it tore him up inside. “You can go, grab some greasy fast food, and put all this shit behind you. You don’t even have to look back as you’re driving away. Hell, just flip this quintessential New England town off in your rear-view mirror. I know I would.”

She shifted on the hardwood floor. 

“Beetlejuice,” she said, and he couldn’t help it; he groaned in longing when she said his name. For a second she pressed her lips together, then went on. “I was still hired to get you out of here. How would I do that if I just left?”

He wanted to scream, _“Say my name three times!”_ but she continued speaking.

“I can free you. I can just repeat your name, and that’d be more powerful than this stupid chalk circle.”

Beetlejuice held his non-existent breath. Was she saying what he thought she was saying?! They were on the same wave length?! _She was going to say his name and set him free?!_

Lisette sighed. “But . . .”

What? What but?!

“ . . . there was something else in the books. Something I found after you explained exactly what the incantation circle was meant for. I didn’t bring it up because I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. But not only are we running out of time, we literally have no other option.”

In spite of his growing anticipatory excitement, a feeling of dread washed over him. He wondered if his hair reflected that; sometimes he just couldn’t control the random colors that appeared in it. With a dry throat, he asked, 

“What are you talking about, Lis?”

She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite name. Fear? Sadness? Worry? 

After a pause that included a deep breath, she continued. 

“I can free you. I can scuff the chalk marks and break the barrier. Or I can say your name three times and that’d do it too--” 

A tiny whine escaped him, alerting her to how excited that possibility made him. Lisette didn’t acknowledge his desperation.

“--but even if I do either of those . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Beetlejuice waited for her to finish her thought, but it was difficult not to demand her to spit it out. 

Finally she said in a soft voice, “. . . I told you I used my blood. Apparently that wasn’t the greatest idea, because blood makes the ritual stronger. Even if I release you from the circle, even if I do it with your name, we’re still bound together.”

⁂

He’d be free, but . . . not free? Bound to a breather? What did that actually mean? And what did he know about her, anyway? She had some real sensitivity to spectral activity, sure, but she was also a self-admitted con artist. And she was a liar! She had a scary knowledge base since she managed to trap him, which sucked but was intriguing, and he couldn’t deny she was pretty hot under the peasant skirts and tank tops . . . Beetlejuice shook his head to get rid of the distracting, useless thoughts bombarding him to focus on the real thing here: anything was better than how long and what he’d had to endure in this fucking house!

Lisette had continued talking, filling in gaps he hadn’t considered in light of this new development.

“There’s really no reason for me to just erase the chalk. What good would that do? If we’re still bound and your restrictions apply, then we’re still in the same boat. You can’t leave the house, so I can’t leave the house. So really, the only viable option is your name, which will set you loose. Then you can leave and that means I can leave. We’re totally getting some food after this--” 

Lost in his own swirling thoughts while trying to work through the complexities of what she’d told him, Beetlejuice was only half listening to Lisette’s ramblings, which seemed redundant and circling, and mostly to herself. 

“--so, here goes . . . Beetlejuice--”

His name, as always, grabbed his attention. He was and wasn’t ready; should they make sure this really was the only option? He wanted this so badly--

“--Beetlejuice--”

Oh shit oh fuck the second time the second time it was happening he was going to come in his pants she was going to say it, _shewasgoingtosayit--_

“--Beetlejuice!”

The sweet rush of power that he longed for, that he chased, that only an orgasm could rival, flooded through him. Beetlejuice couldn’t help but grin like a mad man and throw his arms out, a pose he’d learned from Christian icons that just felt so damn good! He hadn’t realized the weight the Netherworld bureaucracy had burdened him with, tethering him to this fucking house; like old Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning being released from the chains he’d forged in life he felt lighter and freer; the world was his oyster, and, and--!

Beetlejuice took a breathful of air. He couldn’t stop smiling! With a jaunty tilt of his head, he literally dove at Lisette. 

_tbc_


	15. Chapter 15

She shrieked a little and flinched. He did too, truthfully, as he got to the invisible barrier that had repelled him before. But it was nothing now, and he passed over the sigils effortlessly before grabbing Lisette tightly.

“Baby, this is one of the best days of my life! Afterlife? Ah, fuck it--it’s just one of the best days!” he crowed, and kissed her solidly on the mouth so hard his teeth met hers.

From previous encounters with breathers--was he a breather now?! Oh christ, he didn’t know but it didn’t matter!--he expected her to fight him off. Whatever. She said they were “bound” and he didn’t know what exactly that meant either but he was so pumped full of energy nothing mattered except he was free! Fuck you, Netherworld!

But Lisette didn’t push back. At least not strongly, not in utter protest. She did try to wiggle her arms out from under his, but that seemed more like an effort to draw in a breath rather than get away. When her arms were liberated, she actually took his upper arms and held him close. 

She did break the kiss, however. 

“Oh,” she murmured. “I wondered if touching you was going to be as good as when our shoulders passed in the attic.”

She remembered that day? It felt good to her too? 

Beetlejuice smirked. “What? You think I can’t make it _better,_ baby?”

And that flirty challenge had her shoving his ratty suit jacket off his shoulders, and him yanking her tank top completely out of shape and hurriedly, fumble-fingered undoing her bra to get to her tits. He squeezed them and her nipples became hard from the handling and the chill in his hands. He quickly shrugged out of his jacket, then returned to pinching her nipples.

Their kisses were still as wild and hard as the first he’d given her. And despite the fact that he was pretty sure there was a base note of rot in his mouth and hers tasted like old peanut butter, she surprised him by shoving her tongue between his teeth and licking his hard palate, which opened the door to their tongues exploring each other.

During the desperate lip-lock, she managed to pop the button on his fly and somehow maneuver his trousers and even rattier underwear down to his mid-thigh. She grasped and stroked his cock while her other hand cupped his balls, even though he was hobbled. Clothing was the worst! Beetlejuice growled his frustration at the time it was taking to get naked and would have simply wished it all away, but Lisette continued to push at both his and hers, and stopped kissing him as she bent over to shimmy out of her panties. 

It made her hand release the grip it had on him, which he hated, but to make up for it, while she was at his crotch, she grinned up at him and licked the underside of his cock.

Standing unsteadily on one foot to try and remove her panties completely, Beetlejuice held her shoulders to support her. Lisette didn’t take him fully into her mouth, just licked a wet, teasing circle around the head of his cock before trying to stand back up completely. He didn’t let her; he hooked a foot around one of her ankles and eased her onto her back, going to the floor on top of her, between her legs as he did.

He was still more dressed than not, with his pants at his knees and his shirt still on, unbuttoned. So was she. Her top was skewed, her bra was loose but still looped over her shoulders, her skirt was bunched at her waist, and she still hadn’t managed to kick her underwear off an ankle. It was perfect. Beetlejuice spit into his hand, lubricated his cock, and made to push into her. 

Her hand encircled his to guide him into place. 

As he rocked his hips forward, it was just as he’d imagined: her pussy was tight and so hot. He cried out. Lisette cried out too, for an opposite reason.

“Jesus that’s cold!” 

“Gimme a second, I’ll warm up, baby. Promise,” Beetlejuice grunted, and thrust shallowly, just to savor it. It felt so good, so good--

“Friction’ll help,” Lisette told him. 

He looked down at her, puzzled. She sighed and said more plainly, “Fuck me!”

The lady knows what she wants. It would be rude to deny her. 

The heat of her pussy never got any less. It felt divine to have his cock inside her, and even though it’d been too many years to count Beetlejuice quickly fell into a snappy rhythm that slammed the points of his hips against her. The wooden floor wasn’t doing his knees any favors, so he could only imagine how awful it was on her back, but Lisette clutched at his clad shoulders and moaned in time with each inward thrust, so he didn’t think she was too concerned about it. 

He dropped his face in her neck as he continued. This wasn’t going to be a marathon fuck; her pussy was too sweet to last long. His movements became choppier, less even, and he probably should have told her he was going to come but instead he latched onto her and cried out with a mouthful of skin between his teeth.

His hips juddered as his orgasm overwhelmed him, leaving him buried deep in her pussy as he came.

Lisette didn’t complain; she held him tightly and gasped too.

After a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Beetlejuice relaxed and put his entire weight on her. 

“Hey--are you going to sleep now?” Lisette demanded. “Not cool, Beetlejuice!”

That spurred him. He pushed himself up to stare down at her. “Watch the B word, baby.” 

Instead of being too angry about it, however, Beetlejuice rolled his hips and watched pleasure cross her face. 

“That’s nice,” she murmured, so he continued it until he lost his erection.

Eventually his cock slipped out of her and he moved to her side on the floor. 

They were the picture of debauchery: clothing half-on, hair mussed, a wet spot on the wooden floor, the smell of sex wafting around them. Some of the circle was gone now, smeared by her back and his movements. Lisette was coated in chalk dust.

She didn’t seem to care about that for the moment. She slipped a hand to her groin, then cupped his flaccid cock too.

“You did warm up,” she told him, as if surprised he’d told the truth. 

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you’ll be warmer in general because we’re bound together?”

“Maybe.” 

“I didn’t come, though.”

He raised his eyebrows. She waited expectantly, and finally he said, 

“I’ll do better next time, babe. You gotta remember, that was the first fuck I’d had in I don’t know how long. I gotta get back in practice.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Lisette told him, flicking his chest. “But right now I want to see if we can leave. I’m starving!”

Beetlejuice watched her get up and straighten her clothing. She wiped herself with her panties, but then didn’t put them back on; she just readjusted her skirt and let it fall down her legs. She rehooked her bra and pulled her shirt back into place. 

Then she held a hand out to him. “You coming along? If the doors open and you leave the house, that means I’ve managed to complete the job I was hired for.”

He grinned as he took her hand and she used her weight against his for leverage as he stood up. Beetlejuice didn’t know exactly what “being bound” to her was going to entail, or how long it was going to last, or anything. By saying his name three times, Lisette had given him at least some of his power back, and it was going to be fun finding out how much he could do. They’d deal with the “bound” thing as it came. 

She had to ask if he was coming along? His first opportunity in forever to leave this fucking house? Like he was going to decline?

Lisette seemed to understand, even if he didn’t articulate it. After he’d pulled his trousers back into position, she led him down the stairs and opened the inner front door, than the screen door with no problem. She held them open but didn’t go out first; she gave him a raised-eyebrow look that said, “Well?” without words. 

All the questions and the unknown future aside, he just wanted to leave and be on Earth, not fucking Saturn with its goddamn Sandworms. If he had to be shackled to her, it was a price he was willing to pay.

Hesitating only an additional second, Beetlejuice took a step over the threshold back into the world.

_fin!_


End file.
